Pariah
by A Song of Purity
Summary: The war is over. The fighting, Katara discovers - much to her chagrin - well, the fighting isn't. She saved the world, once, because no one else could. This time, she's saving it again because no one else wants to. A more realistic take on the aftermath of the war. Katara-centric, eventual Zutara/Bluetara. Canon ATLA to beginning of canon LoK, non-canon in between.
1. I: Home Is Where The Heart Is

**Hey fellow ATLA cult memb-I MEAN FANS. NO CULT HERE. KEEP MOVIN' ALONG. **

**Please keep in mind that this is canon A:TLA _and_ LoK - however, the arc of this story will be non-canon in between. Enjoy! **

**Main pairing will be Zutara/Bluetara with some generous servings of side Taang and Tykka (I really don't like Suki, poor sorry Sokka). **

**Disclaimer: Don't own anything! Wish I did own Zuko though. Yum. **

* * *

_**Pariah**_

_I: Home Is Where The Heart Is_

The war is over. The fighting, Katara discovers - much to her chagrin - well, the fighting isn't. The fighting is far from over.

Rebuilding is harder than they thought it would be, she also realizes as she stands in the center of the Southern Water Tribe in her blue fur parka and hair loopies, waterbending new buildings out of the frozen tundra. But she doesn't truly realize this until much, much later, when she has to fight for change every agonizingly slow step of the way.

Rebuilding - well, physically, it's not so difficult, really - she grins as she unleashes the full potential of her bending to carve out a city in hours that would have taken a team of other benders weeks. By nightfall, the returning warriors are reunited with their families and are already staking claims to the largest rooms in her new ice palace, and the newly elected Council made half of Northern Water Tribe ambassadors throws a feast. For the first time in fifty years, there is life and joy in the heart of the south pole.

There is also, of course, an abundance of seal jerky and sea prune soup. Katara stifles a laugh as she imagines her brother wolfing down as much food as he can fit into his mouth at once and complaining about the lack of meat he'd had on his travels. She pauses to wonder how Sokka and Suki are faring in their diplomatic tour around the Earth Kingdom colonies, the ones that were governed by the Fire Nation.

Her laughter dies when her mind conjures up an image of a laughing airbender with childhood sparkling in his eyes and a mouth too large for his not-quite-adult-yet face. He has a comically disgusted expression, nose upturned and mouth slanted down in exaggerated horror as Sokka tips an entire bowl of sea prune soup down his throat and holds his bowl out for seconds before he's even finished swallowing.

Katara shoves everything but reality away and tries to pretend that her fingers don't itch with the overwhelming need to tear the long-hanging string of orange and yellow beads from around her neck and replace it with the comforting coolness of her mother's necklace. The rest of her body yearns to wander through the four corners of the earth with him, wherever he is, without a care in the world, but she pretends that she doesn't want that, either, that she is happy here, in the Southern Water Tribe, _alone_, helping to rebuild what once was a grand people.

It's a lie, of course. But she learns to become quite skilled at lying to herself. Besides, not even Gram-Pakku had begrudged the Avatar a chance to recapture his lost childhood. She wonders when Aang will return to help them create the better world that they'd promised themselves that day in Iroh's tea shop. She tries not to remember the way Aang kissed her, but she relives it anyways.

* * *

_(That day is the last time she remembers smiling for a long time to come.)_

* * *

Not once did they ever believe that rebuilding would be easy. No, Katara knew that putting together the pieces of a shattered world would take time and strength. She just hadn't realized that time and strength precluded sweat and blood and tears and dark circles under her eyes that never seem to go away anymore.

Her days are filled first with heavy labor, then with heavy politics, and then a mixture of both. There are dozens of faces to remember, dozens of faces she should remember but doesn't, seventeen new pro-unity decrees she signs off, three new trade agreements established with the Earth Kingdom...and then, despite the fact that the war is _over_ and Zuko is Fire Lord now and everyone is safe, the Council does everything they can, short of outright refusing, to worm their way out of an agreement with the Fire Nation.

So the first thing she ever exercises her authority over is securing a trade relation with the Fire Nation. Seal jerky in exchange for lightwine. Being a war heroine, master waterbender, and daughter of the Chief did include perks, she supposes. Like shutting up a room full of men and women twice her age to get what she wants, what the Southern Water Tribe needs but refuses to admit to. Not everyone derides her decision, of course. Many of the warriors who returned from the Fire Nation wholeheartedly support her initiative. Warm, spiced lightwine is better than any kind of liquor they could produce on their own, in the snowy plains of the South Pole.

Not that they support her other plans, in any case.

In fact, she seems to be waging her own war, her against her people, and she doesn't know if she's fighting them or herself, or if her hard-won victories are bleeding her people drier and drier. Except they don't seem to be withering, _she's_ the one who's withering as they suck strength out of her and use it against her, and every inch she gains is paid for a hundredfold in shouting matches, hours of lost sleep, and days when she doesn't eat because she's too busy preparing for her next battle.

_(She wonders how much longer she can continue before she crumbles away into dust and brittle ashes.)_

And the elders - they _fight_ her. Every single step of the way along the rebuilding process - it takes her _four months_ to convince them that teaching male waterbenders to heal and female waterbenders to fight would not, as they put it, "shit upon centuries and centuries of Water Tribe tradition." But she succeeds, in the end. To an extent.

There's just the slightest hiccup in her plan; there aren't exactly any female waterbenders to teach at the school. They were all left behind in the Northern Water Tribe because it's improper for a woman to involve herself in duties like becoming an ambassador. The Southern Water Tribe still lacks its own waterbenders - a lingering aftereffect of the genocide during the war. (Katara suspects that this is the real reason the Council finally acquiesces to her elaborate waterbending academy plan.)

At night, she shivers under her warm furs that cannot stop the icy cold of the new ice palace (_her _new ice palace; she's the one who built the damn thing, after all) floors from seeping through and wonders when the South Pole had turned so cold. sometimes, the fierce-eyed waterbender remembers the fairytale dream she has about the world and her and Aang, and she thinks it's too much. Thinks it's not worth it, thinks that maybe it's time to quit and let the adults sort things out. Adults like Gram-Pakku (she thinks of Sokka, somewhere far, far away rebuilding the Earth Kingdom; who knew the annoying nickname would stick?), Uncle Iroh, and Master Piandao. Adults like her father and Chief Arnook.

And then she remembers what happened last time the adults were left in charge (a hundred-year war was certainly nothing to shake heads at). But for some reason, the first thing that comes to mind isn't the war. It's Zuko and his scar and his mother's gentle face, and she thinks, _that's_ what happens when only adults are in charge and no one else has any say. The thought makes her inexplicably sad.

So Katara keeps her head high and nods and smiles and pretends that she doesn't feel uncomfortable in her own home (because it's not _her_ home anymore, really, it's her people's) and that she's interested in the complicated politics that seem to have followed the Northern tribesmen like a swarming plague. She pretends that she fits perfectly into the role of Chieftan's daughter, something that likens to _princess_ in the Northern Water Tribe, and she pretends that she doesn't notice the stares, the whispers, the _attention_ - because even her tribesmen seem to have noticed that Katara of the Southern Water Tribe left home with the Avatar and her brother and won a war and has come home completely and utterly _alone_.

It's funny, she thinks, because her mother had once told her that home is where the heart is; but her heart seems to have been misplaced because she doesn't feel at home _anywhere_. Not since Aang ran a—left to take some time off from "being the Avatar." Not since her brother left to start uniting the Earth Kingdom settlements that were still occupied by the Fire Nation. Not since Toph moved to Omashu to help Bumi with rehabilitation efforts (and was promptly named his successor by the mad king himself).

Everyone had left until she and Zuko were the only ones still in the capital, and then she was gone, too, whisked back to the south pole while her father sailed off in the opposite direction—north, to become the southern ambassador for the Northern Water Tribe. Her heart was scattered in itty bitty pieces around the world; perhaps that was the reason she didn't feel _right_ at the south pole anymore. Didn't feel at home.

Only, it's not home anymore. Not to her. Because home can't possibly be a place where she feels so ill at ease and clumsy, where she no longer has a family, where she is so _unorthodox_. As the only female fighting waterbender in existence, she is ostracized; as the chieftain's daughter, she is courted by Northern tribesmen she has no interest in, who have no interest in her; as Master Pakku's granddaughter (never mind the fact that it's a nonbiological relationship), she becomes an object of gossip; as one of the Avatar's gang, she is revered as a hero and placed upon a pedestal.

But Katara knows better.

She's not their hero. She's their pariah.

She's their savior, too - they just don't know it yet. They will, though, because she's the kind of change that you fight and fight and fight even though you know it's inevitable, and then she tows you under and she drowns you in tears and blood until all you know is her push and pull and the taste of salt and bitter metal. And sometimes, she is dragged under, too, and she flounders in blindness.

But then Katara looks around her at the village that's not a village anymore, it's a sparkling, glorious city of crystal ice that rivals the Northern Water Tribe, it's alive for the first time in a hundred years. Women's eyes are no longer dull and weary and jaded. Her Academy has enrolled its first female waterbender, a tiny little girl who resembles Ty Lee in all but appearance from a recently reunited Southern Water Tribe family. (The girl calls her _sifu_ without needing any prompting.)

_(She looks into the little girl's big blue eyes and sees herself, and Katara knows that she will never give up.)_

* * *

_Katara of the Southern Water Tribe is not hiding._

That's what she tells herself after nearly a year since the end of the war, a year of bitter loneliness and longing. She's frustrated with herself and her inability to lead her people as she should; she is only sixteen, still, barely of marrying age._ She is still a child_, the Councilmen and Councilwomen murmur sympathetically, patronizingly, _she is not yet wise to the ways of the world, she is too young and ruled by her emotions._ Katara knows better. She is not a child; no one who has lived through a war is a child anymore. She asks herself every day why she stays at the South Pole when snatches of gossip she catches by the docks reveal that yes, the Southern Water Tribe needs her, but it's much more likely that the rest of world needs her _more_.

Katara of the Southern Water Tribe will _never_ turn her back on anyone who needs her.

_So why do you stay? _some part of herself whispers in the recesses of her consciousness, flickering like a firefly that refuses to crawl back underground to escape the frigid cold. _Why do you stay when people need your help?_

_Katara of the Southern Water Tribe is not hiding,_ she tells the firefly obstinately (she almost believes it herself if she says it enough), and then she traps the firefly in a jar so that she does not have to see its glow during the day.

* * *

Katara writes every other week to Zuko. He's the only one she _could_ write to, at any rate. Sokka and Suki are never in the same place for more than two weeks. Toph can't read. She is a little more than afraid to write to Ty Lee or Mai. And Aang...well, she doesn't know where he is, exactly, but he's probably spending time with Guru Pathik and maybe teaching Teo and the Mechanist and their community how to settle into the Air Temples.

Besides, writing to someone she knows must have have it just as hard as she does keeps her sane. Katara would bet her waterbending that Zuko had it much, much harder than she does.

She always starts her letters with _Dear Sparky,_ because she knows how easily irritated he is by that nickname. Plus, she figures it can't hurt to remind him that being Fire Lord doesn't exempt him from being teased by old friends.

Sometimes she follows with an offhanded comment about how cold the South Pole is, even with her thick parka (she received a new one, rich and burgundy and velveteen, from her father with the first winter shipment from the Northern Water Tribe). Other times, she catches herself halfway through writing the sentence and stares at the black ink numbly, remembering that the South Pole used to be all the warmth she ever wanted, and she crosses it out angrily with thick black strokes.

She tells Zuko about how her waterbending Academy is doing and the progress that the little girl makes. She complains about her suitors and the way they stare at Aang's necklace as if it is a viper-mantis on her neck, ready to strike at any time. She describes the beauty of the emptiness of the tundra plains are at night, when the sun finally dips below the horizon after the month of daylight and the entire world is suspended in frozen silence with just the sprinkling of stars overhead in the indigo sky and the snow underfoot crackles with the beginnings of first frost. She tells him she likes moments like these best, moments where she can lose herself in the vast quiet of the wilds.

She admits (reluctantly, of course) that she is getting tired of seal jerky and lukewarm lightwine and sea urchin soup and longs for the variety of spice and flavor in Fire Nation food. She wants meat that isn't part fish - Sokka must be rubbing off on her.

She writes that, too, in her seventeenth letter to Zuko. _Sokka would be proud,_ reads her loopy script, and she wonders if Zuko will laugh when he reads it, if Zuko will snort inelegantly in that way of his and crinkle his gold eyes and allow a small chuckle to escape his permanent scowl.

_(She can't remember the last time she laughed.)_

She writes to Toph once. She sends Toph a shard of a frozen meteor embedded in the tundra some four miles out from the city that she finds on one of her long midnight walks. Toph sends her a piece of charcoal and a poorly written reply. It's so illegible and nonsensical that she can only imagine that King Bumi wrote it, and the paper it's written on is so smudged with dirt that the whole thing is pretty much unreadable anyways. Katara appreciates the effort, though she writes no more letters to Toph. She wouldn't know what to tell the younger girl, anyways. Toph Bei Fong - _Queen_ Toph Bei Fong - has dealt with politics her entire life. Katara can understand why the earthbender so adamantly shied away from this kind of life, now.

Though on second thought, the waterbender realizes that Zuko must have had to deal with politics his entire life, too. She writes to him, anyways - somewhere deep down inside, Katara knows that he will understand her better than Toph will.

* * *

Every other week, Katara sends a messenger sparrowkeet to the Fire Nation capital and thinks about Hawky, probably being spoiled fat by the Bei Fong family. She almost smiles a half-smile, but the action feels awkward and stiff, as if her body can't quite remember how to do it properly.

Every other week, standing on the parapet that surrounds the Southern Water Tribe, Katara watches her sparrowkeet wing off into the distance and wonders if he will ever write back.

* * *

**Leave a review! I'll give you cookies. Virtual cookies? Bluetara will happen soon. I promise. Until next time, thanks for reading! **


	2. II: What Never Was There

**Thanks for the response to the first chapter, guys! Glad you enjoyed it. No Zutara/Bluetara in this chapter. Yet. Maybe a tiny bit at the end? I swear I'll try to get to the Bluetara/Zutara soon. I promise. Yup. I think the Jang Hui mention at the end here is a big hint to what's going to happen though. **

**Sorry I don't have cookies for you reviewers...Sokka ate them all. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything! But I wouldn't mind owning Uncle Iroh and his endless supply of jasmine tea. I love jasmine tea. Comes from being Taiwanese with grandparents who also love tea, I suppose. **

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**_Pariah_**

_II: What Never Was There_

_"What do you mean, you're leaving?"_

_"I wanted to...well, Guru Pathik promised me he'd tell me stories about Gyatso and everyone. And I want to make sure that Teo and his dad are settling into the Air Temples okay. I think I'm going to teach them how to carry on some of our traditions. And how to play air pong."_

You can't just leave, _she wants to say, and the words are at the tip of her tongue, _you can't just run away from your responsibilities again. _But then she sees his large eyes, sparkling with all the hopes and dreams of an innocent child, undarkened by a war he won. A war he didn't fight. Aang doesn't know the true horrors of war - he doesn't realize what he has to give up if he wants peace._

You can't just leave me here,_ she wants to cry. _You can't go off and have fun and be free while the rest of us give that up to make the world a better place.

You're the Avatar, _she wants to say. _You have a job.

_"You're the Avatar, Aang," she says instead. "You deserve to take a break."_

_His eyes light up and he breaks into a wide grin. "You think so, too?" he pips, rubbing his hands together excitedly. "You should come with me, Katara! We can explore places we didn't get a chance to during the war! We can go ride the Unagi at Kyoshi Island and I can take you to see the rest of the Air Temples and show you how we used to train there!"_

_She unconsciously steps backwards, away from the blinding innocence - immaturity, she corrects herself - in those huge gray eyes. _Yes! _she wants to say, _Yes Aang, I'll go with you, I'll be there for you always, we'll be together forever, _but she can't say it. She isn't like him, all wonder and dreams and naivete. She wants to pretend she is, but somehow, she can't force the sparkle into her eyes, she can't force the grin to her lips. _

_"I can't, Aang. I'm sorry," she whispers, and she feels the telltale sting in her eyes and heat in her cheeks that tells her she is about to cry. She doesn't know if she cries for the knowledge that she will never be free again, or if she cries for herself and the childhood that she - unlike Aang - will never get back, never fix. _

_Because the difference is, she doesn't think she ever really had one, and you cannot repair what never was there. _

* * *

_(Katara cries every time she wakes up from this dream.)_

* * *

On the last day of summer, a two-person speedboat arrives on the docks in the middle of the night. She sees it during her midnight wandering (she does it almost every day now; she tells herself that she enjoys the peace and quiet and it's _not_ because she's scared of her own dreams) and runs at it, war-trained reflexes screaming _suspicious! suspicious! _at her as she storms towards the docks along rapidly-formed ice paths. She throws impromptu ice skates onto her boots and springs forward, ready to confront would-be attackers.

Two people step off the boat and face her directly and take their hoods off. One is a petite girl with long black hair tied up in a messy bun whose pale jade eyes stare straight through her. The other is a tall young man - taller than she remembers him - with a permanent gold-eyed scowl and a permanent flame-shaped scar.

Katara trips and slides to a halt at their feet. She stares up at them wide-eyed. She should jump up and hug them and grin. She should welcome them with the grace and generosity of the princess of the Southern Water Tribe. She should push them into the water when they aren't looking to pay them back for the time they did the same to her back on Ember Island. She should be happy to see them.

She stands there and gapes at them and does nothing.

"Hey, Katara," Zuko says hesitantly, moving his hand in a sort of half-wave, half-handshake motion. He steps forward to give her an awkward one-armed hug, made even more ungainly by the new difference in height between the two of them and the fact that she is still frozen in place and doesn't hug him back, and then he steps back sheepishly.

"How do you live in this white fuzzy shit, Sugar Queen?" Toph mumbles irately, stomping her bare feet a couple of times on the snow. The docks make an ominous cracking sound and the earthbender quickly stops. "I can't see anything at all. I can barely feel you."

Katara hears the resigned, stony tone of someone close to giving up in the little earthbender's voice. Katara meets Zuko's eyes and recognizes the desperate, drowning darkness in the gold pools of fire. She sees herself in a mirror when she looks at either of them - lost, struggling children who have been thrown into a world of adults that they shouldn't have been a part of for many years to come.

And she doesn't know how to respond, so she says the first thing that comes to mind, which is, "You look pale, Zuko. Are you eating properly?"

Toph snorts. "Wow, Katara," the earthbender drawls. "Not even two minutes and you're already trying to mother us." Katara flushes and doesn't deny it.

She leads them through quiet, narrow streets of crystal ice and black-blue light past eerily empty marketplaces and slumbering igloos. Her intuition tells her that it would be best for Zuko and Toph to remain completely anonymous; the way they prowl through the night, glancing edgily around them with their hoods covering their faces, confirms her suspicion.

They have haunted, dark circles under their eyes and Katara wonders what exactly the two of them are running from. She wants to ask. Instead, she serves them roasted fish and leftovers from dinner in her large room. Toph wolfs down her portion but Zuko barely picks at his food. He glances at her and bites his lip and looks away guiltily, but Katara understands what it's like to not have the willpower to even eat anymore, so she stays silent and represses the maternal instinct that nudges her to make sure he's eating properly.

(No, she does _not_ recognize those dark circles because she has them herself, because she's running from something, too. Because Katara of the Southern Water Tribe is _not_ hiding from anything.)

"Nice place you got here," Toph remarks through a mouth full of winterfin and blue snapper.

"I don't like it. It's too big for m-" Katara bites off the rest of the sentence abruptly and blinks. The little earthbender has a smirk on her face, and even Zuko snorts a little. "I guess Sokka's not the only one who falls for that."

She knows it must be a couple hours until dawn, but she doesn't feel any more weary than she usually does, so she doesn't usher Zuko and Toph off to bed. She doubts they could sleep, anyways. So Toph talks about her weekly visits to Uncle Iroh's tea shop (she's in Ba Sing Se right now, at Bumi's suggestion, and dear Tui and La that city is a mess), and Zuko talks about his weekly visits to the local healer to receive sessions for his lightning scar because there's no one who can heal quite like Katara. Katara talks about the little girl at her waterbending Academy whenever there is a pause in the conversation that is long enough to turn into importance, to turn their attention to reality.

She wonders when she became so afraid of the world outside the Southern Water Tribe. She thinks back to the time she and Sokka set off to rescue Aang from angry-ponytail-Zuko, bright-eyed and eager to explore the big world outside, and she thinks, _how could that little girl full of dreams have possibly ever been me? _

When there is nothing on Toph's plate but fishbones, a pause - heavy, significant, pregnant - lulls their conversation into idleness, and Katara opens her mouth to say something about the harpoon she'd received from one of the Northern Water Tribe men as a courting gift a couple days ago, but the silence swallows up her breath and closes off her throat. She closes her mouth and waits like a man on his deathbed waits for death.

Death, she thinks, is a relief compared to the desperation in the firebender's rough voice as he describes what Capital City is like now that the war is over. Soldiers with no war to fight are unemployed, factories with no machines to build are shut down, Fire Nation governors who have no right to Earth Kingdom land are refusing to relinquish control. Earthbenders and firebenders break into fights on a daily basis. Non-benders fight, too. Political factions rule the city; pro-unity doesn't seem to be winning or losing, but pro-Ozai is deeply entrenched in the nation's most influential and wealthy nobles. The water is polluted from the run-off of the industrial areas where they built war machines, worse than Jang Hui ever was. There isn't enough food to feed the influx of ex-soldiers and resulting baby boom. There aren't enough buildings to house new families or refugees. Discrimination against everyone runs rampant. There aren't enough soldiers to spare to keep crime in the city to an acceptable level. Ozai has nearly been broken out of jail seven times already. Azula is -

Zuko bites off the end of that sentence and Katara wonders how the deranged bender is doing and if her fire is still that breathtakingly beautiful shade of blue.

The Fire Nation capital is dying. Katara continues to gaze past him in silence. She doesn't know how to respond again, so this time, she doesn't.

_People out there need you, Katara. Where have you been? _

She looks to Toph, who hasn't said a word since Zuko began. The earthbender must have been able to sense her shift in weight and direction even on this ice, because Toph shrugs and says, "Don't look at me, Sugar Queen. I got enough problems in Ba Sing Se, but I don't need to cry about it."

Katara stares pointedly at the black-haired girl (before remembering Toph is blind and can't see it anyways) and the waterbender thinks, _this is how you must feel all the time, knowing when people are lying_. But she doesn't push the issue. There's a deepness to those sightless jade eyes that wasn't there before, a shadow that comes from the kind of weariness that you can't shake because it's become a part of you already, it's stolen your soul when you were looking the other way.

It breaks Katara's heart a little. _You're twelve,_ she wants to tell Toph. _You can cry if you want to. I'll be here for you. _But she doesn't say anything because she can feel how dangerously close they are to a breaking point. _  
_

_Where's Aang? _she wants to ask. _Any news of him? Is he coming back? Is he coming back for me? _The words don't come, though. She doesn't ask. Because Katara knows the answer already, she knows how Zuko will shake his head and refuse to meet her eyes and how Toph will stay uncharacteristically silent and shuffle her feet on the crystal ice. She knows how they will look at her sadly, how they will _pity_ her with those sympathetic half-smiles and downturned eyes, and she knows that _that_ is her breaking point, because she will be angry and explosively indignant, and then she will realize that they have every right to pity her because she is a sixteen-year-old girl who saved the world and was left behind, and her anger will drain away until there is nothing left but her emptiness.

But Katara of the Southern Water Tribe refuses to be pitied, so she does not ask. "Zuko, are you okay?" she says instead, flinching on the inside at the generic question, but her concern is genuine.

Zuko says in a small voice that she never would have thought to hear him speak in, "Help me, Katara. Please." His voice breaks on her name.

* * *

_She's always been a sucker for brooding boys with troubled pasts, Katara reflects later, laughing self-deprecatingly as she recalls Jet and his Freedom Fighters._

* * *

In the half-gray, hazy hour just before dawn, a small two-person speedboat slips out of the harbor at the Southern Water Tribe with three people on board.

Katara stands at the bow of the ship, watching the place that was once her home fade into the misty distance as she propels the tiny watercraft deftly through the waves. Zuko is asleep in the cramped cabin, and Toph is yelling at her to _slow it the fuck down, Sugar Queen, I'm going to hurl _because the little earthbender can feel every chop and bump they hit with the ship's metal hull.

In her too-large room in the ice palace, Katara leaves behind a letter to the Council, a harpoon she doesn't know how to use (and doesn't think she ever will), and a long string of orange and yellow beads, and she wonders if she should feel guilt at her relief, or relief at her guilt.

* * *

"How did you know I would see your boat?" Katara asks curiously when Zuko is awake and Toph is sleeping off her seasickness in the fiery-rose glow of the afternoon. "Anyone could have found you."

Zuko shrugs, looking a little confused. His hair blows against his face in the breeze as they cruise past Kyoshi Island on Katara's little path of skipping waves that propel them forward faster than even an eel-hound could swim. "You told me you go outside almost every night along the shore," he replies carefully, studying her attentively. "In your letters. You go outside late at night because you have trouble sleeping and it helps you think and you enjoy the silence and the sky. You've written it a few times, now, so I thought that you wou - Katara?"

She cries into his arms and doesn't know why she is so relieved that Zuko has read her letters (her grasps at sanity), and he does not mind that she gets snot all over his shirt or that she nearly waterbends them into a sandbar because she forgets to release her bending as she sobs onto his shoulder and the speedboat veers sharply.

* * *

Toph comes staggering out onto the deck a few minutes later and vomits over the railing and yells at Katara for not steering properly, and then promptly faints.

* * *

**Hope I kept y'all interested! Leave a review. I can't promise any cookies this time (damn you Sokka), but at least he hasn't touched the vegetables? **


	3. III: Could Have Been

**Hello everyone! Sorry this update is so late, I've been busy at work and running a lot of errands on the weekends. But there's a little bit of Zutara in this chapter. I promise. Yup. **

**Azula also makes an appearance in the next chapter. I feel like Mike and Bryan didn't flesh Azula out to her full potential, and I absolutely HATE how she's portrayed in The Search comics, so I've taken creative license here. Warning: this chapter is looooong! **

**Disclaimer: Don't own any of it! But I bet if I went to Vegas with Toph, I'd be able to buy all of it with our winnings...hmm...**

* * *

**_Pariah_**

_III: Could Have Been_

The Fire Nation capital is everything she has ever heard it to be and nothing she remembers it as.

It is a gloriously scenic image, a sprawling, bustling metropolis weaving around the base of a volcano and a dignified and neatly ordered Inner City inside the rim of the volcano itself. She remembers feeling awed by the sheer size of it when they'd flown up to the Inner City to fight Azula at her coronation. She remembers the way the teenagers at Ember Island spoke of it as if the city was a heaven of some sort.

The city is different now, of course. (So is she.) As Zuko's personal guards sneak her quietly up the volcano under the cover of night, Katara sees the city for the first time as it truly is. She sees a city with a harbor and a navy and a trading fleet and fishing ports set up all along the beach. She sees a city that is easily ten times the size of the Northern Water Tribe yet still manages to stay a coherent unit. She sees a city full of cement brick buildings and paved stone roads and chimneys with homely smoke rising from their tops.

Katara sees a city that could have been glorious, a city that could have been everything that the Fire Nation had wanted to share with the world. But it isn't.

The harbor is full of ships floating listlessly with the tides, sitting in murky brown water. The fishing ports are empty, for Katara knows that few fish would survive in filth like this. The city is ten times the size of the Northern Water Tribe - but there are more than twenty times as many people, and Katara sees no agricultural sector, so she knows that the coherent unit is an unsustainable one. The cement brick buildings are crammed full with a burgeoning population. The paved stone roads are green and rustic red from grime and disrepair. The chimney smoke is thin and wispy and insubstantial, just like the ideals of peace they harbor.

Katara sees a city full of broken dreams and dying hope.

Then she draws over the edge of the volcano rim, and she finds herself immersed in another world. An idyllic world full of towering, vastly wealthy estates and beautiful gardens and a large palace at the center of it all. On the west side, the enormous aircraft hangar is anchored into the volcano wall, surrounded by an armada of inactive war balloons.

That's all she can really remember from her trip to the royal palace. She must have passed out at some point after passing by the hangar, because the next thing she knows, she is stirring groggily awake in a sea of warm red silk and velvet and cotton and sunlight is streaming in through a window on her left. For a split second, Katara panics and freezes, torn between her body's immediate instinct to thrash around in the sheets and her mind telling her that she is _not_ in danger despite the unfamiliar surroundings.

The moment passes, and Katara relaxes into the fluffy down pillows and snuggles back into bed, because she never had the chance to sleep in at the Southern Water Tribe and this bed is ridiculously soft and comfortable.

And for the first time in a year, Katara is _warm_.

(She doesn't worry about who the hell undressed her - because she's only wearing her undergarments, and her thick fur parka is slung over the back of the headrest - until she wakes up a second time, just in time for lunch and greeting the Fire Nation.)

* * *

Living in the capital is not what Katara expects it to be. For one, the palace servants do not like her.

Oh, they are polite enough, and they dare not show any disrespect to her in broad daylight. Zuko would have their heads off. It feels a little bit like the Southern Water Tribe, and they stare and point and _whisper_. Especially since she's taken to wearing as little as possible (_appropriately_) in the late summer heat.

Katara laughs at that image, anyway: the old, angry, ponytail-Zuko executing faceless human blobs over something as trivial as being impolite to _her_. But then she sobers and remembers that the Fire Lord has more pressing matters to attend to. Matters that take up his every waking moment (and continue into nighttime, it seems, because Zuko never looks like he's gotten more than a couple hours of sleep).

Like the unimaginable ocean of debt that the war has left in the Fire Nation, the shortage of food, the shortage of housing, the unemployment, the wary and hostile tensions rising in the city between people from different nations.

Oh, and the fact that Ba Sing Se is still paralyzed in the Dai Li's _there is no war in Ba Sing Se_ mindset and no one in the city knows how to react to the fact that a war that never existed is suddenly _over_.

So they stay in their walls and not even King Kuei can persuade them that they need to swallow their pride (Katara scoffs and knows that their pride is not pride, but fear) and help the world recover. Toph has been banned from Ba Sing Se, though she manages to keep in contact through her Dai Li network. Uncle Iroh is trying his best to make the public _understand_, but there's only so much he can do – he's a firebender, and while a lot of people there are willing to forget that in his tea shop, not so many are willing to forget that the firebenders are the cause of the war.

Even spending time with Mai is more important to Zuko than Katara's presence in the palace is (though the waterbender suspects that their public strolls are more for the council and politics than for pleasure). But that's understandable; she would spend as much time as possible with Aang, too. If he were here. But he isn't, so she forgives Zuko for neglecting her a little to make up for lost time with his girlfriend, even if it means that Katara has to sort out a lot of politics on her own.

(By "sort out" she means "be trampled upon by a ruling council of fat old men who don't like her.")

When Katara and Toph are invited to tag along, Mai doesn't seem to mind Toph's abrasive humor, but Katara is never really sure; the raven-haired girl still maintains a cool outer facade at all times. Well, sort of - Katara can tell that Mai is making a genuine effort to become friends. So the waterbender makes one, too, and while Katara teaches Mai waterbending yoga poses, Mai teaches her how to throw knives.

For some reason, though, Katara feels like there's something _off_ in the way Zuko acts around his girlfriend, around everyone, as if he doesn't seem completely sure of himself. There's this stiffness in his movements like there is when he deals with the Fire Nation nobles every morning at council, a sort of creeping uneasiness that he himself doesn't really notice.

But Katara notices.

It's in his rigidly straight posture (like the way he moves around the palace during the day), the way his eyes constantly dart from side to side, his expressions of an all-consuming urge to just fucking _do _something and fix _everything_ because it's all just somehow _wrong_.

And Katara realizes that she knows because it's exactly how she'd felt back in the Southern Water Tribe. Because he's surrounded by people whom he used to know who are strangers to him now, just like she had been. Because he's just one teenager, not even old enough to call himself an adult, and there's an entire _world_ out there waiting for him (and Aang, Katara acknowledges sadly) to fix it.

Because home is where the heart is, but Zuko's friends in the world are scattered, just like Katara's, only Zuko's family is scattered, too. There's not much Katara can say to that because he still won't let anyone visit Azula or Ozai (every time he does, he comes back with his face pinched and drawn, and it's not like his mother is around). All Zuko has left is the politics in the city and the task of repairing a broken nation. It's not much.

Toph, daughter of an Earth Kingdom noble and now queen of Omashu, is used to the politics, the rumors, the _game_. The new Fire Lord and the Water Tribe Chieftan's daughter are not.

The little earthbender doesn't stay long, anyway. Only two to get up to speed on the capital's current state and work out a few trade agreements before heading back to Omashu to help King Bumi stabilize the countryside. And then Katara is left completely and utterly alone, with only the turtle-ducks in the garden to keep her sane in between council meetings that involve subtle, petty wars between everyone who's anyone and hectic public appearances in the Lower City to try and soothe the boiling tensions there.

* * *

_Katara looks around her at the friends who saved the world and realizes that they are all pariahs, one way or another, and it's not because they are children trying to play the game of the adult world or because they strive for unity when the nations are shattered beyond repair. No - she, Zuko, and Toph are pariahs because they are some of the most powerful benders the world has ever seen, and the world is _scared_ of them and what they could accomplish. _

* * *

She doesn't see Zuko as much as she would like. He's nearly always sequestered away in the dark war room or otherwise flung out into the city to try and fix the many, many problems out there. Though to be fair, Katara's always busy, herself. Her days are filled with solving problems in the capital and going out to the city and actually putting those solutions in place.

She draws clean water from filthy sewage pipes that haven't been cleaned in years and distributes it among the poor. She works with earthbenders who would have refused to work with Fire Nation citizens to repair crumbling buildings and make them into much-needed habitable space. She washes the streets and the walls clean, little by little, under the brilliant summer sun. Her mocha skin tans into chocolate as she sweats and labors and waterbends, scrubbing the paved stone roads free of grime and filth and mud and blood.

She would offer her help to the clinics in the city to heal the dozens upon dozens of sick and dying and wounded, but they do not want help from a _waterbender_. Mai cautions her one afternoon as they are having afternoon tea together at the palace. "I know you're trying to help," the black-haired girl begins as she nibbles her fruit tart delicately, "but you're making it worse. The people don't see you as a Water Tribe woman trying to help Fire Nation citizens. They see you as an old enemy who offers charity because you think they are too pathetic to help themselves."

Ouch. Well, Mai has always been blunt, Katara sighs as she follows Mai into a trade council and tries to propose a new line of exchange of goods between the Southern Water Tribe and the Fire Nation. Besides, the gloomy girl means well.

She spends days cleaning up the Lower City regardless of what people think of her. But she does not approach the clinics anymore. She tells herself it's because Mai warned her away and she wasn't doing any good there anyways, but a small voice in the back of her head whispers to her at night, _it's not because of what Mai told you, is it, Katara? You aren't strong enough to go out there and face their stares, their judgement, their hatred, their condescension. You can't handle their indignity. You can't handle their shame. You can't handle your disappointment. __  
_

On her eighteenth day in the city, she is cleaning the fountain in the center of the Eastern Plaza in the Lower City, where the air is tangy with the scent of fish and ocean. She is joined by a Fire Nation guard with a mop and a glass of lemonade. He hands the drink to her as curious onlookers watch, a little disdainful and not even daring to whisper, and he scratches his short blonde hair while glancing around him sheepishly at the stares of the downtrodden Fire Nation citizens and a few hostile glares from Earth Kingdom ex-servants. "I...um, thought you could use some help. Looks like tiring work," the guard shrugs, looking at the ground and shuffling his feet as he wields the mop like a sword. "And I don't really have much to do on duty, anyways."

So Katara toils away at clearing the dead fish and the debris and the rotting food from the fountain and the guard, who introduces himself as Sao, wheelbarrows the refuse to the nearest landfill. "Why help you?" Sao repeats when Katara asks him the question at the end of the day, sore and cramped and exhausted from bending all day. One of the first things she noticed as the man worked with her was that he was far from comfortable with her. He shrugs stiffly. "Better you than those old noblemen who sit in council every day and do nothing. You're out here, doing manual labor for god knows what."

She nods and thanks him for the lemonade and the company before stretching and turning to return to the palace. (Katara isn't familiar with the streets, but she'll find her way.) "Don't get me wrong," Sao calls after her as she walks away. She freezes midstep. "I don't like what the Fire Lord is trying to do. Ozai was a good thing for our nation. We used to be the grandest city in the world. I don't think you and your friends deserve to be called heroes. I'm not helping you for _you_." She knows what he is saying. He is helping her because she is helping the city. Not because he supports the peace.

Katara turns and meets his conflicted golden eyes and slightly aggressive pose. "I know," she calls back as a fish vendor bustles past her with a cart of day-old fish that hadn't sold before the markets closed. She doesn't acknowledge that the hope that bloomed in her chest that morning, a hope that maybe they had a chance for everyone to work together, that she and Zuko and Toph were not working towards an unachievable dream, is rapidly wilting away in her chest. She blinks and shakes her head, waterbending away her tears angrily with the motion so the blonde Fire Nation guard does not see them sparkling on her cheeks in the setting sun. "Thank you, anyways."

He nods at her, a cool, triumphant, _defiant_ kind of nod that the conqueror gives to the conquered to acknowledge their presence, and then she flees, somehow managing to escape the maze that is the Lower City and grab a ride up the volcano in time to make it back to the palace for a late dinner.

Katara takes her dinner in the garden and sits by the tree, watching as drowsy turtle-ducklings waddle up to her to beg for food and crumbling some of her bread for them to peck at. Then, suddenly, the turtle-ducklings squawk and waddle away from her in a hurry, and she frowns, wondering what set them off.

"Oh - sorry," comes an apologetic voice from behind her that sounds as weary and exhausted as she feels. "I didn't...I didn't know you'd be here. No one comes here, usually. Sorry for scaring off the turtle-ducks."

"They'll come back," Katara says absently, motioning for Zuko to join her under the tree. It's been two days since she has last seen him, and tonight, he looks so emotionally strained and physically worn out that she knows he has just come back from a visit with Ozai or Azula. She wants to ask, and the question is at the tip of her tongue, but she instinctively understands that Zuko comes to this small garden for the peace and quiet, so she swallows her words and lets Zuko settle next to her.

They sit like that against the large tree for a period of time. The turtle-ducklings come back after a couple short minutes, and Katara feeds them more breadcrumbs from her hand. "This used to be my mother's garden," Zuko says softly just as Katara finds herself nodding off to a doze. She blinks, rubbing the fatigue from her eyes and glances at the Fire Lord, who looks tired enough to drop dead. The turtle-ducklings scamper away at the sound of his voice. "She used to feed the turtle-ducks with me all the time. I was pretty bad at it, though. I always threw the crumbs too hard. And the crumbs were always too big."

She giggles and snorts in the most undignified manner because she can imagine eight-year-old Zuko throwing bread at flustered turtle-ducks a little too well in her head. "Come on," she laughs, handing him a piece of bread and instructing him how to crumble it properly. "Here, hold your hand out like this. And just wait for them to come to you." Katara leaves a small trail of breadcrumbs leading to Zuko's hand, and she watches as his face lights up in boyish wonder when one adventurous turtle-duckling snaps the crumbs from his hand and retreats quickly to the pond, quacking madly.

Katara realizes that, for some reason she can't quite figure out, Zuko looks more run-down than he should be (and that's really saying something). It's something in the way his shoulders slouch and his entire body just seems...sore. His eyes have dark circles under them that seem too prominent. It's probably just his daily sparring, which he insists he keep up to stay in shape and remind his guardsmen and the city that he is just as human as they are.

So she shrugs and says nothing about it, even as Zuko falls asleep on her shoulder half an hour later with a crust of bread in his hand. She dozes off, too, at some point, and the next morning, Zuko complains jokingly about their protesting muscles and vows to never sleep against a tree again. Katara scoffs and reminds him that he tied her to a tree, once, with no intention of letting her go until she gave him what he wanted. Zuko is so startled at the memory that Katara can't help but laugh at the guilty, conflicted expression on his face.

Katara makes sure to do a little extra during their weekly healing sessions on the scar from Azula's lightning.

* * *

(Neither of them think twice about falling asleep against each other's shoulders, but later, when Katara thinks back to it and grumpily rolls her extremely stiff shoulders, she realizes a little guiltily that it's probably better that Mai never find out about it because a girl so proficient with daggers should probably not be pushed into expressing jealousy.

She wonders (a little sardonically, recalling her days being hunted by a mentally unstable princess, a cheerful acrobat, and a gloomy, expressionless markswoman) if the raven-haired knife thrower knows how to express anything.)

* * *

**Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed! I didn't like this chapter as much, but meh. Transition chapters are always annoying. Anyways, as always, leave a review! Tata for now. No cookies this time, because Sokka and Momo keep eating them all...**


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